Because Mastodon only has a linear feed, I don't even see the point, you're only going to see what you explicitly followed. It actually takes a lot of time just to build up interesting content to follow. One of the more frustrating things is when someone I find interesting goes crazy posting and the lack of algorithm just means I see way too many posts from them in a row. Maybe the mobile apps improve on this, I dunno.
The key to Mastodon is to follow hashtags so you instantly get any content relevant to your interests. I'm only following a few people because most people who have a similar interest to me will also post stuff not related to our common interest. By following hashtags, I get every post I want to see and none of the noise.
Mastodon has no algorithm, if one guy posts 30 things you get them sequentially so it is dominated by who types the most until they eventually annoy you enough to unfollow them. No algorithm also means you don't filter out their meal photos etc. based on clicking not interested.
Twitter is maybe even worse now though, no matter how many times you click not interested on hard right content, street fights, etc. it just forces it on you. They have stop letting you adjust aspects of your feed.
Agreed. One of my issues with Mastodon is that I cannot see content from people I don't subscribe to. Even if all of my follows like/favorite a toot, I won't see it. This is a flawed design. This is the main reason Twitter is better than Mastodon, IMO. It makes my Mastodon feed pretty calm, but it also feels a bit dead, which makes me wonder why I opened the app at all.
I want to like Mastodon, but there are no like/retweet counts. I have no idea how to find the good content without sifting through mountains of stuff I don't want to read.
The trick to Mastodon is to follow hashtags instead of people. I have a couple of people I follow but I mostly follow hashtags relevant to my interests. The signal-to-noise ratio is very high. This also means it is critical to include hashtags when you post or comment to attract attention.
Eh, that comes down to how you choose to use the platform.
Speaking for myself, early on I used the local and federated feeds to find interesting people to follow, but once my followed list was built up, I found I rarely spent time in those feeds.
Personally, I'd say if folks are using Mastodon in the way you're describing, they'd be better off using Lemmy or kbin, which are centered around communities containing topics, as then you can just follow those communities rather than following individual people.
They key to Mastodon isn't to follow accounts, but to follow hashtags. This way you see posts that you are interested in without having to find accounts you are interested in. Most accounts post other stuff I'm not interested in so that's just excess noise I don't need. With hashtags, I see what I want and none of what I don't want.
lack of algorithmic feed (and the whole anti-algo slant) and lack of openly viewable likes on people's profiles are actually gonna backfire. mastodon is gonna get lonely and boring, because it's kinda hard to do content discovery, particularly the kind where you get recommendations based on people you follow or interested in, so that those recs would be in closer proximity to you, rather than just getting random posts from trending. for how much algo stuff (like topics, suggested tweets, etc.) and particularly algo feed gets talked shit about, it's vital to discovery of new posts and new people.
without those things, it's easier to just run out of stuff and people to see, and end up in a place where you're caught up with things, and new people aren't entering your circle, and the activity just stops. well, it is also unlikely, because people just do stuff and mix other people in, but it's easier to end up in that static state, when you don't get suggestions in other ways.
at least there are reblogs. but there's also no option to filter those out right in someone's profile. so it's gonna get real annoying if those are gonna be the only way for someone to push content from somebody else.
I'm getting good mileage out of Mastodon by being selective about who I follow and curating that well. Being able to choose who you read (and who you don't!) and when is a huge advantage over Twitter.
As much as I'd love to use Mastodon, both times I tried, I got bored and gave up because I couldn't find interesting people to follow. All of the people I do find interesting are only on Twitter.
Still not recommendation system instead of just chronological posts which makes it really impractical to browse when you follow more than 10 people. This is really where Mastodon could shine with open algorithms an end user could choose from instead of proprietary ones like Twitter and al.
isn't the point of twitter that you follow only who you want and other people's garbage doesn't show up if you don't want it? what makes mastodon different in that regard?
If there is a large number of new users who use Mastodon as on-to-one Twitter replacement, it's not going to work because Mastodon does not support Twitter style communication well.
If you just start following people, there is no algorithm to learn preferences and sort junk out. you must just stop following people who post several times of day trivial personal matters, or invest more time to scrolling.
People who don't use #hastags don't get noticed easily.
For me, the experience of Mastodon is worse than Twitter - essentially, either you follow the global firehose feed, or you're limited to the small amount of content your direct followings create or re-toot.
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